Empty Promises to get you in the door - Consultant C Space Employee Review

Thank you for writing about your time at C Space. We truly appreciate your mentions of the positives in working with us: the quality of our insights and storytelling work for our clients, the caliber of our people, and our overall salary and benefit package--including our amenity-filled location near south station in Boston! Especially during these COVID times with virtually everyone working from home, it is nice to remember our attractive office environment. It is true that we are part of a holding company which can present additional governing complexities at times. The flip side is that it also offers us a large network of other agencies and professional associates with whom to build and expand our business from, and in general our parent company lets us run our business since they know we do it successfully. Your comment about potential nepotism doesn’t ring true with me. We do have a few married couples but they are not in similar roles or functions; and building business always means leveraging your networks for prospecting. As far as your thoughts go about not being a meritocracy, we work hard to ensure that each person who advances has earned their position, and we do this through balanced, objective and fair calibrations across teams. And though we unfortunately did have to say goodbye this year to less than 20 people in the spring-- which was heart wrenching – it was understandable due to pressures from the coronavirus effects on our business. That is not something thankfully we’ve had to do for several years honestly. Acknowledging that we can definitely do better with regards diversity of our agency, our DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) effort has launched with great enthusiasm this year; we have an 80 person strong Allies group, a peer-nominated governance board for the Americas and EMEA, and aggressive goals set by our CEO for the next few years. Like many organizations, the murder of George Floyd and others this year have moved us to develop commitments that we will work hard, collectively, to meet. Related to work life balance, especially this year we know how much stress has played a significant role in our lives on top of covid worries, racial unrest and injustice, and election concerns. We’ve consistently sought the advice of our working parents, offered leaves, and provided additional holidays as well as summer – which have morphed into “focus”-- Friday afternoons. I agree with you completely that agency life is not for the faint of heart! Our culture however encourages flexibility, meaning work when you can/need to, instead of rigid, formal business hours; this is especially true now when people are not running to catch trains. Finally your point about bringing in new talent is a good one; we’ve happily made 10-15 hires in the past two months, and though we are committed to filling leadership roles from within wherever possible for the advancement of our people, when we need new skillsets we do look to the outside at all levels. We appreciate your years of hard work as a consultant and wish you all the best.